Tamworth’s Sam Spokes has likened the addition of road and track cycling to the Northern Inland Academy of Sport’s cycling program as a “middle stepping stone” between club and state level riding.
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Spokes will be road and track head coach while Alyssa Rogan and her team will continue to run the mountain biking program.
They will both fall under the same cycling banner and share some training sessions together before the splintering off to focus on speciality areas of training.
Spokes, a former professional rider, said he was keen to impart some wisdom onto up-and-coming riders.
"To be able to build that juniors [base] back up and give them all the access to the right training techniques, on and off the bike, is something that I hope I can do to help push juniors of the area back to a national level,” Spokes said.
He added: “ It’s [NIAS program] targeted to high school kids and we hope to be an add-on for juniors who are already riding at a certain level and we want to help them jump to the next level.”
NIAS’ Brent Hartley said the academy had a fantastic group of coaches working across the two cycling disciplines.
He said people can apply through the NIAS website now with the program to start soon.
“Applications are open for the next couple months and we’ll start the program at the end of November,” Hartley said.
“We’ll have a Christmas break and then we’ll get into our education sessions and the induction.
“Kids will get access to nutrition, sports psychology and exercise physiology.”
